Boothman
noun ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 One who mans a booth, such as at a fair or (historically) a Thing. rare
"A little later a man came running and he called urgently for Leif Ossursson, bade him go in haste to Gilli lawspeaker's booth: — Sigurd Thorlaksson ran in through the doorflap there and he wounded one of his boothmen to the death."
- 2 A corn merchant, especially one in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. archaic, dialectal
"He was not a native of Newcastle, but bad apparently come from the country in youth to serve his apprenticeship as a boothman, or corn merchant; had gone, when out of his time, to gain experience of commercial life in Germany; and […]"
- 3 A projectionist at a movie theater.
"Two veteran eastern Connecticut boothmen died recently: Irwin Dawley, 55, projectionist at the Stanley Warner Garde, […]"
Example
More examples"A little later a man came running and he called urgently for Leif Ossursson, bade him go in haste to Gilli lawspeaker's booth: — Sigurd Thorlaksson ran in through the doorflap there and he wounded one of his boothmen to the death."
Etymology
From booth + -man. Cognate with Scots buthman (“a shop-keeper”). In some cases, such as translations of Norse sagas, use of the word (to mean "one who mans a booth") was probably reinforced by the cognate Old Norse búðarmaðr (Icelandic búðarmaður).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.